After last year’s scintillating production of Fame, the New Theatre Stage Experience 2011 turned to an American musical of earlier vintage — and wowed its audiences just the same. Frank Loesser’s 1950 Broadway hit Guys and Dolls is not such obviously suitable material for the annual ten-day wonder — this being the time the young hopefuls spend rehearsing the show — but this proved in some ways a definite advantage.

There is something hugely endearing, for instance, in seeing kids as young as eight strutting their stuff as seasoned New York gamblers in trilbys and garishly striped double-breasted suits. One pint-sized lad in a tuxedo brought a neat touch of comedy as compere of the seedy Hot Box nightclub.

A total of 136 youngsters, aged up to 18, were involved in the show. Sometimes all were crammed on the stage, allowing director Ed Blagrove more than usual verisimilitude in showing the well populated streets of the Big Apple.

Here we found Nathan Detroit (Luke Saunders) agonising over where to hold his travelling crap game (and how to keep its continued existence from his disapproving long-term fiancee, the Hot Box’s chanteuse Miss Adelaide, played by Eve Norris). Specifically, Nathan needs to find an immediate $1,000 to rent suitable premises. Maybe it will come from his bet with high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson (Edd Campbell Bird) that he can’t persuade the virtuous Sarah Brown (Georgina Hendry) of the Save-a-Soul Mission to accompany him on a trip to Cuba. He can, of course, and the two fall in love.

All four principals were played with confidence and style, with some gutsy vocal performances, especially from Ms Hendry on If I Were A Bell. I also enjoyed Adam Biggs’s Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Greg Birks’s Harry the Horse and Georgina Smith-Blacker’s Big Jule. But, in truth, everyone on the stage was great.